The World Can't Wait - Stop the Crimes of Your Government

By War Criminals Watch - Posted on 20 November 2012

by Debra Sweet, Director World Cant Wait Where do you turn when the Commander in Chief keeps a “kill list;” orders drone strikes on several continents, shredding lives and the concept of national sovereignty; supports indefinite detention without trial, vastly expanded domestic surveillance and the suspension of core civil liberties? When so many people seem not to know, or worse, accept or even cheerlead for what they used to protest – because the president isn’t a right-wing Republican?

World Can’t Wait provides thousands a way to speak and act for a real end to U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, to stop an attack on Iran, and in defense of peoples’ rights. To carry on the critical mission of stopping the crimes of our government, we need your financial support[1] now.We hear from those jammed in cities increasingly vulnerable to man-made disasters, or isolated in areas of this country far from critical thinking, who feel alone in their outrage at both the actions of their government and the complacency around them. World Can’t Wait puts out a clarion call. In going after the cutting edge issues, digging through the lies and cover-ups to speak the truth, we help people find their voice. We give substantive ways to encourage people to act on what their consciences tell them is true, opening up space for people to take principled stands of resistance, and then we support them when they do.

• With Bush-era war criminals still free, our projects War Criminals Watch[3] and Fire John Yoo! [4]organize visible protests at their public speeches, demanding prosecution.

• We Are Not Your Soldiers[5] enables a story exchange between veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq and high school students; shows youth how they could lose their humanity, as well as their lives, if they sign up for U.S. occupations and provides students with the tools they need to resist recruitment.

• With our colleagues at kNOwdrones.org[6], we show the reality of secret and massive use of unmanned vehicles, targeting civilian populations in eight countries as part of the continuing “war on terror.” We have displayed models of drones that have had a dramatic impact on tens of thousands of people.

• World Can’t Wait, in coalition with others, organizes people in creative actions to stop indefinite detention of 6,000 men in Bagram prison denied habeas rights by the Obama administration; to close Guantanamo and stop solitary confinement and mass incarceration. We are out in front resisting political repression, from the draconian threats of the NDAA to FBI subpoenas against activists, to suppression of the Occupy movement.

We take joy, and some responsibility, for the surge of public opposition to attacks on birth control and abortion; for the outrage at Neanderthal politicians’ comments about rape; and for growing support of LGBT rights. But the lives of women of reproductive age, immigrants, and the one quarter of U.S. children in poverty are in dire jeopardy absent the mass independent movement of resistance needed to oppose the whole direction of the U.S. government.

Most endangered are the people living in the drone sights. But as the U.S. burns massive amounts of fossil fuel occupying sovereign countries and maintaining military bases in 130 countries, dredging the tar sands and the deep sea for oil, the very future of the planet itself hangs in the balance through climate change.

In 2013, World Can’t Wait challenges you to help change the political terrain so that many more say “not in our name” and put humanity and the planet first in thinking and action. With your donation[7], you join in sending a message to the world that, despite the longest occupation in U.S. history, there is a growing section of people demanding that it end.